The EartHand Gleaners Society can be a bit difficult to define. I’ve often used the analogy of a “back-to-the land group,” only instead of making jam and bread, they make linen from home-grown flax and weave baskets with materials harvested from city parks, all while operating out of downtown Vancouver.
Perhaps they are hard to pin down because there’s no straight through-line for the society. Their seeds were planted twenty years ago in a public art project by Oliver Kellhammer working with Environmental Youth Alliance, and it has been growing organically ever since. EartHand’s founding director, artist Sharon Kallis, joined the garden in 2007 as a volunteer and has, more or less, led the project since 2009.
My own journey as an artist is firmly enmeshed with EartHand experiences. I was lucky to stumble upon their open studios around 2014 while still living in Vancouver. At these free afternoons, held in downtown parks, a wide cross-section of people would drift in to check out the offerings. What struck me back then was the inclusiveness across both age and race, which is the core of their mission statement:
“We aim to strengthen intercultural connections and relationships to place, and find meaningful ways to acknowledge our Host Nations. Respectful collaboration is the core of our practice”.
Between 2014 and 2015, I would drop into these sessions never knowing quite what to expect; the activities on offer changed with the seasons. In spring, I participated in planting a woven living fence using willow cuttings. Late fall brought out the flax processing equipment and I learned about the concept of retting, and how to hackle flax. And in winter, I learned how to make a small basket out of previously harvested daylily and blackberry fibre. One day, as I was leaving, Sharon asked me if I had learned how to make cordage yet. I had no idea what she was talking about. In five minutes, she showed me how to hand-twist a simple rope out of fibres harvested from Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus). It felt like magic before my eyes. Learning to make potentially useful art material from a much-maligned invasive species was absolutely an “ah-ha!” moment for me.
Fast forward to today at EartHand, and those free drop-in sessions continue, alongside an array of paid-for programming. Their current calendar contains sessions such as “Natural Colour: From Wood to Wool,” “Nettles & Wild Fibre Processing and Spinning,” and a reading group called “Ancestral Cloth: Textiles and Racism.”
I spoke recently with Sharon and was surprised to hear that most of the society is still volunteer-based with very few paid staff. “People’s perception of EartHand is that we are much larger than we are,” she said with a laugh.
And the hands-on aspect continues. At a recent “Local Cloth Sampler” evening at their main Strathcona Park clubhouse, Sharon and other “skill sharers” set up stations where people could be introduced to various ways to make cloth. First, they taught everyone how to make cordage with daylily leaves. Daylily is a common, natural material that’s easy to find in the city. It dies back naturally in the fall, is easily gathered, and quick to rehydrate before use. I like to call it a “gateway” material.
As Kallis describes, “Groups then traveled through four stations, learning about flax growing and processing, nettles from stalk to cloth, wool processing and spinning and natural dying. Every area had new materials for participants to twist into their rope while they listened to stories of our cloth journeys and learned about local fibres with textile eye candy everywhere.”
I can imagine how those workshop participants must have felt, as I can trace the clear path of my own artistic journey back to that first time making cordage from blackberry fibre.
EartHand’s workshops continue to be organized by the seasons. “We manage two urban environmental learning gardens for the Vancouver Park Board, and the plantings and seasonal rhythms dictate the work we do and the workshops we offer. The questions that we explore burble up from the conversations within our community gatherings,” says Kallis. “How do we be makers without first being consumers is at the core of this work while investigating how we can be here on stolen land—as stewards of these lands—and how do we manage the complexity of the work in a good way.”
Back in 2014, I’ll admit that part of what caught my attention was the idea of free art supplies from the garden. “Straight Outta’ Compost,” if you will. EartHand’s mission statement states it more elegantly as: “Be a producer without first being a consumer.” This approach is incredibly appealing to me personally, but also to many others who want to tread lightly on the earth. It also happens to be a very budget-friendly approach to making things.
My introduction to plant fibres led to a deep dive into learning basketry techniques and building sculptural forms. But it’s often struck me how basketry is a lot like sewing, just on a bigger scale. When weaving a basket, each complete motion is often called a “stitch.” And I learned the hard way, when making a random weave basket, that I’d better stitch through all the layers and pull snug if I want my piece to stay firm and tight—not unlike quilting or embroidery.
Of course, most basketry uses large, rustic materials, but depending on the plant one can work the natural fibres down to a finer and finer material. One classic example would be flax: grown and processed for the fibres in the stems, which are processed down into long fibres, then spun into thread and woven into linen.
Sharon has used this method to experiment with several other plant fibres as well. Some of the plants she uses include nettles (Urtica dioica), milkweed (Asclepias species), fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium), New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax), daylily (Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus), tule (Schoenoplectus acutus), dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum), and yucca (Yucca filamentosa).
All these processed plant materials can be laboriously spun into fibre, which can be painstakingly woven into fabric, and then finally sewn into clothing. Sharon has made several garments out of fabrics like this (sometimes spun with wool), and, yes, she wears them. In fact, she is in year three of a seven-year “buy nothing for my wardrobe” cycle (See Q&A with Artist Sharon Kallis).
Sharon in an entirely hand-made outfit. (Photo credit Jamie Macdonald.)
And it’s not just me, many people mention this mindful slow-down when they first start working with natural fibre processing. That feeling of connection, of tapping in to a journey that others have had before you is something Kallis is familiar with and refers to as “the notion of the universal ancestor.” I have felt myself falling into the repetitive rhythms that come along with plant fibre processing and musing about my own ancestors and how they may have processed their own materials.
In the meantime, Kallis realizes that not everyone is going to choose to work this way, so she has some suggestions that may help makers forge a closer connection to the fibres they choose to use.
- Try to support a local spinner.
- If you can’t support a local spinner, support a Canadian fibre mill.
- Ask questions about where your fibre comes from, and how it’s grown and processed.
- Try doing exchanges with friends: One person may love spinning, while another adores weaving. You don’t have to do everything yourself.
Not all areas in Canada are lucky enough to have access to an EartHand-like organization, but if you are interested in getting closer to the source of your fibre, some EartHand workshops are now happening virtually. Or try search terms like local fibre shed and weavers and spinners guilds in your area.
Kallis has a lot to say about the future of EartHand (see my Q&A with her), and I’m excited to see what type of workshops will spring from those thoughts. In fact, I’ll be learning how to use a drop spindle to spin wool in a Virtual Spinning workshop, led by Kallis herself, in October 2022. This paradox of using modern digital technology to connect to an ancient craft will be a fascinating experience. I’m looking forward to building on my repertoire of handmade skills with more ancient knowledge that’s come through the modern filter of the EartHand Gleaners Society.
A scene from a Gleaners Gathering. (Photo credit Kristen Man.)
All images courtesy Sharon Kallis/EartHand Gleaners unless otherwise noted.
